New Book Recounts 1980 Skyway Bridge Accident

By TOM PALMERTHE LEDGER

Tuesday

Oct 29, 2013 at 8:51 PM

For Floridians, the most memorable bridge collapse in memory was the 1980 tragedy at the Sunshine Skyway Bridge near St. Petersburg.

There have been some spectacular bridge collapses in this country in recent years.The Interstate 35W bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed in 2007, killing 13 and injuring 145.Earlier this year the Interstate 5 bridge across the Skagit River north of Seattle collapsed, but fortunately no one died.But for Floridians, the most memorable bridge collapse in memory was the 1980 tragedy at the Sunshine Skyway Bridge near St. Petersburg.Thirty-five people died when a cargo ship hit the bridge during a blinding rainstorm, causing part of the span to collapse.If you have only a vague memory of that event 33 years ago, a recently published book offers a refresher and more.The book is "Skyway: The True Story of Tampa Bay's Signature Bridge and the Man Who Brought It Down" by Bill DeYoung (University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 197 pages,$24.95).DeYoung, a St. Petersburg native now living in Savannah, Ga., is a veteran journalist. DeYoung said he became fascinated a few years ago with the incident, which for some reason had not had book-length treatment until now.Another book published this year, "The Sunshine Skyway Bridge: Spanning Tampa Bay" by Nevin and Richard Stitler, focuses on the bridge's history, but includes chapters on the accident and the bridge's reconstruction.DeYoung said he was troubled by what he thought were incomplete accounts of the events."I wanted to find out what's right, what really happened," DeYoung said.That led to a three-year research project DeYoung called "a forensic exercise" to pore through court documents, press accounts and other materials and to track down people connected to the events who were still around and willing to talk to him, he said.The result was a well-written narrative account of which the May 9, 1980, collision between the MV Summit Venture, a 19,734-ton cargo ship, and the 1954-vintage Sunshine Skyway Bridge was only the beginning.The initial story was big news, though.News accounts of the collision filled the front page and two inside pages of the May 10 edition of The Ledger. Front page stories continued in The Ledger for nearly a week as more details emerged.DeYoung writes the story eventually disappeared from most media outlets as newer tragic news, such as the eruption of the Mt. St. Helen's volcano a few months later, captured the media's and the public's attention.But the story of the Summit Venture and the Sunshine Skyway Bridge was far from over, he wrote.Much of DeYoung's account describes the fate of John Lerro, the Tampa Bay harbor pilot who was at the helm when the collision occurred.There were boards of inquiry, all of which either held Lerro blameless or concluded the sole blame didn't fall on his shoulders.Some fell on the bridge itself, or, more precisely, on the engineers who designed the bridge.Questions were raised, primary among them was why the recommended barriers were never installed around the bridge to protect a structure erected in a major shipping channel from ship collisions.Earlier that year, 23 people had died in a collision between a Coast Guard cutter and an oil tanker near the bridge.Those structural problems were corrected when state officials decided to replace the old bridge with a modern bridge, which opened in 1987, rather than to try to repair the old bridge.But Lerro's story remained the centerpiece of the account.DeYoung described the pilot's life after the collision when he returned to duty until he was too weakened by multiple sclerosis and became an instructor.In the meantime, the pilot had marital and financial problems in addition to his medical problems.DeYoung recounts how Lerro worked to overcome his difficulties and launched a career as a counselor before his death in 2002.Although Lerro is the book's central character, DeYoung tells the stories of others.One was Wesley McIntire, the only survivor of the bridge collapse. His pickup truck's descent was broken by a collision with the Summit Venture's hull before it hit the water.He escaped from his truck and the ship's crew pulled him aboard.Driving across a bridge would never be the same for him.DeYoung also describes the actions of Lerro's lawyer, C. Steven Yerrid, who maintained a relationship with his client even after the legal troubles were over and took Lerro on his final trip into Tampa Bay, a place he loved despite the tragedy, a year before Lerro's death.DeYoung's book is an overdue account of the tragedy and provides details without getting bogged down in them.The book includes some photos, source notes and an index, which is indispensable for a work of this type.

[ Tom Palmer can be reached at tom.palmer@theledger.com or 863-802-7535. Read more views on the environment at http://environment.blogs.theledger.com and more views on county government at http://county.blogs.theledger.com/. Follow on Twitter @LedgerTom. ]

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